4 unique outdoor exercises

Now that summer is officially here, I thought it would be fun to compile a few exercise ideas that you won’t normally find in your typical workout. A couple of them require the participation of a few others, so gather your friends for some healthy workout fun!

Indian RunYou can run around the parameter of a park or a school track for this one. Start with a group of your friends running at a jogging pace in a single file line. The person at the back of the line sprints to the front and takes over leading the line. Once the new person takes over the lead, the new ‘last’ person sprints to the front to take over the lead and so on. To make it more interesting, your team can do this for 10 minutes then add a medicine ball to the mix. Lead person carries the ball until it’s time to pass on to the new lead person. After 10 minutes the lead person can do a call out so that the end person knows it’s time to sprint to take over. Popular call outs: “Hoo ha!” “Booyah!” and “Hut hut!” Feel free to have fun with this one -- because it IS a ton of fun!

Sand BagsFill a duffel bag with sand so it weighs 15-30 lbs. -- depending on your comfort, strength, and ability to maintain excellent posture throughout exercise. I recommend starting out on the lighter side and increasing the weight weekly as you gain more strength and comfort in using the sand bag.

Exercise 1: Toss sand bag over your shoulders and walk up and down hills. Repeat until fatigued.Exercise 2: Go into a deep lunge while tossing sand bag onto opposite side of knee that is forward. Repeat 10 times on each side.Exercise 3: Toss sand bag over your shoulders while on a flat surface, then step from side to side. Add difficulty after 1 minute by leaping from side to side. Be sure to land on the balls of your feet then lower your heels to the ground.

Park ItThe park isn’t only for the kiddies! You can use the park as your training ground. Most parks will be nice and empty at 7:00 or 7:30 pm or early in the morning, so these are great times to make the playground your outdoor gym.

Benches: Use them to do push-ups, to elevate your legs for crunches, and for tricep dips!Monkey Bars: Try to make it across. Amazing upper body work out there!

YogaYoga is a popular form of meditative strength training and flexibility. In summer and on perfectly beautiful days, I often wonder why I don’t see lots of people doing it outside. So I’m adding this one to the list, as it seems like it’s the perfect form of exercise to do outside. It will be a challenge to keep your mind space from becoming distracted by the noise around you, so it’s a great way to begin training your mind to be present.